Big Ideas, Smaller Footprints

As I sat down to write this month’s Editor’s Note, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of green guilt as within hours, I would be on a plane, increasing my carbon footprint en route to what many would probably guess to be one of the most unsustainable places in the country: Las Vegas. Everything may be bigger in Texas, but it’s supersized in Las Vegas as well. Las Vegas brings to mind enormous casinos that stretch across acres with windowless gaming rooms and tricked-out over-the-top luxury suites. It’s known as a city of excess and sin, not efficiency and sustainability.

I started to feel guilty, but then I began to wonder: Could that association with excess eventually become a bum rap? Last year, the opening of the megadevelopment CityCenter seemed to be a step in a new direction, with several LEED Gold–rated entities among the offerings. In our hospitality issue last year, we spoke with Cindy Ortega, senior vice president of energy and environmental services for MGM Mirage, about this supposed green giant. (Click here to reread our Q&A, “Sustainability is a Golden Ticket in Las Vegas.”) Now, a year later, as our hospitality issue for 2011 hits mailboxes, I’m interested to head to Vegas myself for the ASHRAE Winter Conference and the concurrent AHR Expo, and check out the spaces myself.

In a second essay, "Giving Green a Sporting Chance," two principals from Sasaki Associates, Tim M. Stevens, AIA, and Bill Massey, AIA, discuss how green initiatives should be used to push recreation centers not only to LEED standards, but beyond them as well.

Big or small I believe that any step toward reducing waste, energy use, water consumption, and increasing performance and the quality of design and architecture is a win-win situation for everyone involved, be they architects, building owners and operators, builders and contractors, designers, and occupants. Exploring big ideas to get to smaller ecological footprints are, in my book, a jackpot indeed. I may not leave Vegas with any winnings in my pocket this week, but I’m sure I’ll come back with new information. Here’s hoping this month’s newsletter gives you a few takeaways as well.